The present invention relates to an optical pickup for recording information onto an optical recording medium and/or reading out the information from the optical recording medium.
In the prior art, when information needs to be recorded onto a plurality of optical recording media different in recording density and/or medium-thickness from each other and/or to be read out from the different optical recording media, a plurality of optical systems each of which includes a light beam source, a collimator, a light beam splitter, a quarter-wave plate, and an objective lens for respective recording density and/or medium-thickness are used.